In conventional very small aperture terminal (VSAT) satellite communication systems, the VSATs transmit uplink signals to the satellite, for retransmission over downlinks to a hub station connected, for example, to the Internet. The uplink signals carry content such as video, voice, control information, and Internet protocol communications. One known technique to prevent interference between VSAT uplink signals is time-division multiple access (TDMA), which assigns each VSAT one or more unique time slots on a shared frequency band. Another known technique to prevent interference is frequency-division multiple access (FDMA), which assigns each VSAT one or more unique frequency bands, and each band can be a continuous transmission channel.
One of the advantages of TDMA is that each VSAT has the entire shared bandwidth to itself during the time slots it is allocated. This enables the VSATs to readily transmit signals such as voice, comprising bursts of high-rate data spaced apart by low rate data intervals. An advantage of FDMA is that channels can be reserved for continuous use, thereby providing for steady rate content, e.g., streaming movies, with a sufficiently secure quality-of-service (QoS). The assigned channels, though, may lack bandwidth to carry bursts. Additional channels can be assigned, but would be idle capacity over the time interval between bursts.
Accordingly, there is a need, in VSAT and other communication networks, for systems and methods for transmitting dynamically changing types of content channels, over limited spectral resources, with adaptive content-appropriate and traffic demand appropriate selection and application of concurrent multiplexing schemes, and allocation of capacity within the selected and applied multiplexing schemes, thereby providing concurrent benefits and advantages of TDMA and FDMA, together with effective mitigation of various TDMA and FDMA shortcomings.